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Daily Affirmations For Busy Bloggers

I had a rough day yesterday. I write a certain blog for a Very Large Newspaper, and while it wouldn’t be professional of me to go into details, I can boil down what happened for you in what we journalists like to call “fairly unbiased terms”:

1) Something happened at the newspaper which might or might not have been either a popular or unpopular decision;

2) There might have been some people (or possibly not) who objected very strenuously to that decision, or possibly they didn’t.

Anyway, as the public face of the blog that was affected by this decision which may or may not have been made, I might have received at least some of the heat for this thing (or possibly I did not, but I can neither confirm nor deny that), and it occurred to me that what I needed to get me through these kinds of days were some good daily affirmations. The kind of affirmations that would remind me why I became a writer. The kind of affirmations that would totally justify talking to myself in the mirror in the first place.

So I came up with a short list of positive sayings for bloggers like me. Most of us here are writer. Feel free to use them if you like. These are best said in the heat of the battle while at work, although I will caution you to make sure that you retire to a place where you can have some privacy, like the boiler room, because what could happen is that the Director of Human Resources might pass by while you are talking to yourself in that mirror and he or she might re-evaluate your annual review. Not that I would know.

Now that you have found yourself a bunkerairshaftsupply closet comfortable place to recite your affirmations, assume a relaxed position, take a deep, cleansing breath and have at it.

Here, without further ado, are my:

Daily Affirmations For Busy Bloggers

1. I am talented. I am an artist. I am also a large bag of internal organs and leftover pizza.

2. Every day that I am able to publicly state my opinion in a way that makes people laugh or think is a blessing. It is proof that I am alive. It is also written proof of my waning control over my faculties.

3. Typos and factual errors are the Universe’s way of reminding me that I am human. I accept my fallibility with humility and absolutely no sense of shame. The people who laugh at me and post those mistakes on Facebook and Twitter, however, can rot in hell.

4. I am aware of the impact that my words have on others. I resolve to no longer sneak such nasty, twisted hidden messages about avenging the death of my parakeet into my posts.

5. I send my words out into the world on a tidal wave of love and good will. My words cover people with a thick, heavy coat of well-being, which is to my ultimate advantage because it slows them down and makes them easier to capture.

Deb Amlen is a humor writer and crossword puzzle constructor whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Jersey Star-Ledger and other respectable, mainstream publications she tells her parents about when she calls to borrow money. At other times, she is part of the outlaw posse that writes The Onion/A.V. Club crossword puzzles and is also the “X Games” columnist for BUST Magazine, but don’t bring that up if you run into her folks at the Early Bird Special. It just makes them crazy.
On the other hand, she would tell you that she has more than made it up to them by writing for The New York Times as the online voice of the daily crossword puzzle in The Times’ blog “Wordplay."
Deb is the creator of the humor column called “Next Exit” about life in New Jersey for SpringfieldPatch.com, and was recently honored to be a featured speaker at the Erma Bombeck Humor Writers' Workshop where, among other highlights, she broke the ice with her students by attempting to use the ladies' room while wearing a live mic.
Her first book, “It’s Not PMS, It’s You” (Sterling Publishing) is in stores and available online now, and she figures that, if she did it right, this book about male-female relationships will have absolutely no educational or life-changing qualities whatsoever. Please read it anyway.
She lives in New Jersey with her children and her Extremely Spunky Border Terrier™, Jade.

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